HP LTO Ultrium 5 tape drives UNIX, Linux and OpenVMS configuration guide (March 2010)

% cfgadm -al |grep tape

This produces output lines with a format similar to the following:

c9::rmt/0 tape connected configured unknown

The rmt/K entry indicates the tape device file, where K is the instance number. In the above example,

rmt/0 indicates a set of device file options for one tape drive, such as /dev/rmt/0cb, /dev/rmt/

0cbn, and so on.

The cfgadm command may also be used with the –v (verbose) option to list a full path including the

SAS controller:

% cfgadm -val |grep tape

An output containing, for example, “/devices/pci@0/pci@0/pci@8/pci@0/pci@1/

LSILogic,sas@0:scsi::rmt/1” indicates an SAS tape drive connected via an LSI SAS HBA.

Kernel patch levels

For optimal performance, ensure that you have the following minimum patch number:

Minimum patch*

The latest version of the st, sd and ssd drivers patch

(currently 122300-48, though this version may be superceded)

Solaris 9

The latest version of the kernel patch

(05/09 release (update 5) or later)

Solaris 10

Upgrading to the minimum patch level will ensure that the necessary support for officially supported

drives is included in the driver. You can view your existing patch level using the command “uname

-a”. To access Solaris patch upgrades, you need to set up an Online Account with Sun to use http:/

/www.sunsolve/sun/com/.

NOTE:

Patch levels are liable to change every 6 months or so, so these “minimum” levels may quickly become

out-of-date.

To obtain the lastest levels, enter the patch names into the search utility “Search the SunSolve

Knowledgebase” found on http://www.sunsolve/sun/com/.

If for some reason you cannot upgrade to the minimum patch level, you can make the following file

modifications to enhance performance:

Device file variants for a given tape device are listed in /dev/rmt with various suffixes—l, m, h, u, c specifying the ‘density’

(low, medium, high, ultra, compressed), plus additional options b, ‘Berkeley’ behavior, and n, no rewind behaviour. HP

recommends the ‘Berkeley’ device file option for most applications with compressed density c: /dev/rmt/0cb or /dev/rmt/

0cbn

Sun (Solaris) servers and workstations26